Min-maxing

Min-maxing is the practice of playing a role-playing game, wargame or video game with the intent of creating the "best" character by means of minimizing undesired or unimportant traits and maximizing desired ones.[1] This is usually accomplished by improving one specific trait or ability by sacrificing ability in all other fields. This is easier to accomplish in games where attributes are generated from a certain number of points rather than in ones where they are randomly generated.[2] Min-maxing is particularly common in games where the cost of traits does not reflect their expected usefulness; for instance, in a combat-heavy game a player may focus on physical traits, giving a character abnormally low mental and social skills so that the remaining points can all be channeled to physical statistics that are more likely to come into play.[citation needed]

Some video games have guides dedicated to building the absolute "best" character. Min-maxing in video games is considered expert-level play as it requires a perfect understanding of the game's mechanics and systems, but once it is achieved, a game is no longer challenging.[3]